Dragon - Cussler Clive (книги хорошем качестве бесплатно без регистрации .TXT) 📗

“What level?”

Nogami tilted his head toward the ceiling. “The level above, the fifth.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Weatherhill said to Pitt.

“Ready now.” Cautiously, Pitt slipped into the corridor and dogtrotted back to the elevator. They all followed and piled in and stood silent as it rose to the fifth level, tensed for any trouble they might face when the doors opened. Suddenly the elevator dropped down instead of going up. Someone had beat them to it by pressing the button on the level below.

“Damn,” Mancuso swore bitterly. “That’s all we need.”

“Everybody!” Pitt ordered. “Push the doors together to keep them from opening. Al, lean on the ‘door close’ button.”

The elevator stopped and they all pressed their hands on the doors and pushed. The doors tried to spread apart but could only jerk spasmodically without opening.

“Al!” Pitt said softly. “Now hit five!”

Giordino had kept one finger pressed against the “door close” button so tightly the knuckle went white. He released it and pushed the button marked 5.

The elevator shuddered for a few moments as if torn in two directions, then it gave an upward jerk and began rising.

“That was close, too close,” Stacy sighed.

“Going up,” Giordino announced. “Housewares, kitchen utensils, dishes, and hardware—” Abruptly he broke off. “Oh, oh, we haven’t tagged home base yet. Someone else wants on. The light on five just blinked.”

Again alerted, every eye unconsciously rotated toward the panel and the small indicator light that was flashing for the fifth level. Then, as if activated by the same set of gears, they turned and crouched, ready to spring into action.

A white-coated engineer was standing there wearing a hard hat, intently studying notations on a clipboard. He didn’t even look up as he entered the elevator. Only when it began to seep through to him that the elevator wasn’t moving did he gaze around into the Occidental faces. None that he observed were smiling.

He opened his mouth to shout, but Pitt clamped one hand over the engineer’s mouth and squeezed the carotid arteries with the other. Even before the eyes rolled back in the head and the body went limp and sagged to the elevator floor, Nogami was out and leading the others into a passageway.

Weatherhill was the last to go. He paused and looked at Pitt. “When and where do you want us to join up?” he asked.

“Topside in twelve minutes. We’ll hold the cab.”

“Good luck,” Mancuso muttered, hurrying after the others, wondering what the man from NUMA had on his canny mind.

Giordino looked down at the unconscious engineer. “Where do we stash him?”

Pitt pointed up at the access door in the ceiling of the elevator. “Tear his lab coat into strips, then tie and gag him. We’ll park him on the elevator roof.”

As Giordino pulled off the white lab coat and began ripping it apart, he gave Pitt a half-crooked grin. “I heard it too.”

Pitt grinned back. “Ah, yes, the sweet sound of freedom.”

“If we can snatch it.

“Optimism, optimism,” Pitt muttered cheerfully as he launched the elevator upward. “Now let’s show some speed. It’s twelve minutes to show time.”

55

THE MAIT TEAM deep in the Dragon Center could not have been under heavier stress than the two men sweating out the minutes in the communications room of the Federal Headquarters Building. Raymond Jordan and Donald Kern sat watching a huge clock and listening anxiously for the team call sign to be beamed from a satellite in a fixed synchronous position over Japan.

As if triggered by the sudden buzz of a telephone sitting on the table between them, their eyes met, their faces drawn. Jordan picked up the receiver as if it carried the plague.

“Yes, Mr. President,” he answered without hesitation.

“Any word?”

“No, sir.”

The President went quiet for a moment, then said solemnly, “Forty-five minutes, Ray.”

“Understood, sir. Forty-five minutes until the assault.”

“I’ve called off the Delta Forces. After a conference with my other security advisers and the Joint Chiefs, I’ve come to the decision that we cannot afford the time for a military operation. The Dragon Center must be destroyed before it becomes operational.

Jordan felt as though his world was slipping away. He threw the dice one more time. “I still believe that Senator Diaz and Congresswoman Smith may be on the island.”

“Even if you’re right, their possible deaths would have no bearing on my decision.”

“You won’t change your mind and give them another hour?” Jordan pleaded.

“I wish I could find it in my heart to let you have more time, but our national security is at high risk. We cannot allow Suma the opportunity to launch his campaign of international blackmail.”

“You’re right, of course.”

“At least I’m not alone. Secretary of State Oates has briefed the leaders of the NATO nations and Soviet President Antonov, and they have each agreed that it’s in all our mutual interest to proceed.”

“Then we write off the team,” said Jordan, his frustration showing in his tone, “and perhaps Diaz and Smith.”

“I deeply regret compromising the lives of dedicated Americans, some of whom were good friends. Sorry, Ray, I’m faced with the age-old quandary of sacrificing a few to save many.”

Jordan set the receiver in its cradle. He seemed strangely hunched and shrunken. “The President,” he said vacantly.

“No reprieve?” asked Kern grimly.

Jordan shook his head. “He’s scrubbed the assault and is sending in a nuclear warhead.”

Kern went ashen. “Then it’s down to the wire.”

Jordan nodded heavily as he looked up at the clock and saw only forty-three minutes remaining. “Why in God’s name can’t they break free? What happened to the British agent? Why doesn’t he communicate?”

Despite their fears, Jordan and Kern were not remotely prepared for an even worse disaster in the making.

Nogami guided the MAIT team through a series of small side passageways filled with heating and ventilating pipes, skirting heavily populated offices and workshops, keeping as far out of the mainstream of activity as possible. When confronted by a roboguard, Nogami engaged it in conversation while one of the others slowly angled in close and shut down its circuits with a charge of static electricity.

They came to a glass-enclosed room, a large expansive area filled with electrical wiring and fiber-optic bundles, all branching out into narrow tunnels leading throughout the Dragon Center. There was a robot standing in front of a huge console of various dials and digital instruments.

“An inspector robot,” said Nogami softly. “He’s programmed to monitor the systems and report any shorts or disconnects.”

“After we queer his circuits, how long before his supervisor sends someone to check on him?” asked Mancuso.

“From the main telepresence control, five or six minutes.”

“Plenty of time to place the charge and be on our way,” said Weatherhill casually.

“What do you figure for the timer setting?” Stacy asked him.

“Twenty minutes. That should see us safely to the surface and off the island if Pitt and Giordino come through.”

Nogami pushed open the door and stepped aside as Mancuso and Weatherhill entered the room and approached the robot from opposite sides. Stacy remained in the doorway, acting as lookout. The mechanical inspector stiffened at his console like a metal sculpture as the statically charged hoses made contact with his circuit housing.

Smoothly, skillfully, Weatherhill inserted the tiny detonator into the plastic explosive and set the digital timer. “In amongst the cables and optical fibers, I think.”

“Why not destroy the console?” said Nogami.